Deutsche, which has been building up its UK broking business in recent months, has a strong financials team that is already advising Phoenix, the life assurance group, and Bank of Ireland. The German bank has also picked up a number of financial services clients in recent months, including Standard Life and RSA.

Barclays will now go forward with three corporate brokers, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital, the bank’s own broking arm, which is also ramping up its UK broking business.

JP Morgan Cazenove, which inherited Cazenove’s remarkable dominance of the UK stockbroking market, is still the top FTSE 100 broker in terms of clients, with 35. It is currently followed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, with UBS and Deutsche also in hot pursuit.

Broking mandates are rarely profitable in their own right but are considered vital for investment banks in their attempts to win lucrative mergers and acquisition work.

Deutsche’s aim, since hiring Nick Bowers from Credit Suisse as co-head of corporate broking in 2009 to work alongside Charles Wilkinson, has been to reach 25 FTSE 100 broking clients. It now has 21 such clients and has picked up more net FTSE 100 clients than any other bank since 2009.

The one blot on an otherwise glowing landscape is the bank’s recent failure to successfully advise G4S in its attempted acquisition of ISS.

Some say its brokership of G4S is now vulnerable, although Credit Suisse survived a similar issue at the Prudential, after the insurance group’s mega bid for rival AIA failed amid an investor backlash.